Winter, your time is almost up: We have one more week to make this a no-show season

At right: David McClure, of Syracuse, with his dog Walker, enjoys the mild weather last Wednesday on the Onondaga Creekwalk in Syracuse. At left: How the creekwalk looked last Monday, March 5. Photos by Dick Blume / The Post-Standard

When you find a rattlesnake motionless in the road, let it be. Don't touch it, don't provoke it, but don't ignore it either. General rule: Stay clear.

Same with a Syracuse winter.

With eight days to go (spring arrives March 20), Central New York's annual four-month ice age appears to be lying limp and lukewarm in the driveway. Let's not kid ourselves: At any moment, an Upstate winter can spring forth and bite.

Still, we've made it this far. For the home stretch, we need a regional strategy -- a multi-pronged, intergovernmental, communitywide dialogue -- to keep the beast asleep, so we can tiptoe into spring. Consider this eight-point plan:

1. Kill time. Let's take a knee and run out the clock. Force winter to use its timeouts. Don't try anything stupid, like driving to Pulaski for a bag of cheese curds. Stall. Hang out. Procrastinate. In the time you took to read this, 15 seconds of winter elapsed. Hopefully, no town vanished in an avalanche. Avoid turnovers. Don't let winter run its two-minute offense, which can put up numbers faster than Eli Manning. The clock is our friend. Tick, tick, tick. ...

3. Verbal respect. When discussing winter, pretend it's some beloved cycle of nature, like molting. Lament openly that January "just didn't feel right," because you never had to fingernail-scrape the windshield or retrieve your shoe from a thigh-high drumlin of slush. Talk about how you miss the rush of screaming through a whiteout. Basically, when discussing winter, lie.

4. Non-Chilly Cook-Offs. Historically, Syracuse can always count on one sure break from the great white slog: Winterfest. Whenever we hold an event that desires snow, winter phones in sick. It's called "the Winterfest thaw." The worst one came in 1988, after a team of sculptors turned Clinton Square into a giant snow castle. Immediately, the temperature skyrocketed. The castle lasted a day. This year's Winterfest began with rain. A couple more Winterfests could vault us into April. Has anyone considered Winterfest Month?

5. Snow days. This winter, the regular pre-dawn school-closing announcements that bring to children a near Christmas-level joy have almost disappeared. That means districts have snow days to burn. They should use them now. A trace of snow? No school! Slight drizzle? Classes canceled! Make winter think it's still in control. Don't let it know the truth.

6. Golden Snowball Award. After nine straight years, in which Syracuse consistently tallied the highest snowfall accumulation of the five major Upstate cities, let's let another lucky town win this coveted trophy. With the closing of Kodak, Rochester needs a boost of civic pride. How about the Snowball? Their Inner Loop can become the Canyon of Heroes. Frankly, we should throw the contest -- grease the right palms and shave some inches at the Hancock International Airport weather station. (Note: Rochester is ahead by about 10 inches.) Let's remind winter that Syracuse isn't the only city in Upstate New York.

7. Rope-a-Dope. This goes to our comrades in the Lake Effect belt. (We're talking to you, Oswego.) You need to be our Muhammad Ali: Just lean into the ropes and snicker, as winter punches your kidneys, until its arms go slack. Between hits, you must taunt winter: The nights are too warm to sleep! You don't need a shovel for the driveway, because a broom will do! Just cover your head and absorb the blows. Winter can't keep punching forever. Yes, you'll be snowed in. But you're our heroes. You're our champions. We'll toast you at Harborfest.
8. Start hoarding canned food. We all know the reality: The winter of 2011-12 was incredibly light. Next year will be brutal.